Every Moment That Mattered
by Alien Emerald
Summary: The familiar love of home could not compare to the new world that waited for you at your doorstep. Yet a lifetime of choosing the unexplored versus the familiar could not prepare you for the time when the two began to blend.Rose/Scorpius/Lorcan Onesho


Every Moment That Mattered

You are suddenly aware of the acuteness of your pain; as if you are at the end of a needle, the pain sharp and tender, yet it must be a large needle to hurt so much. Your mother, Hermione, looks down at you with wild hair plastered to her shiny forehead. Your father Ron looks at you from afar, as if you might crumple into dust under the phosphorescent light. The Healers stand alongside the bed, mumbling their congratulations, poking and prodding at you and your mother with cold, stiff fingers.

You have no ability to know all of this; you are an infant, barely an hour old, with a brain as small as a pixie with a cry to match. All you know is that your fleshy skin is cold and exposed, there is pain in being touched by the world for the first time, and you are hungry. Dry screams course through your body, but they are confused screams. You are torn between wanting to be back in the warmth of your home, or wanting to stay and explore this new place. But because you are Rose Weasley, risk taker, you choose to stop your cries and explore the road less known.

You are just past talking, past walking, and now you are running through the house with Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny chasing after you, Albus sitting stupidly on the hardwood as his older brother teases him with a rattle. You trip over your nightgown, falling with a plunk onto the floor, stunned by your sudden defeat. You open your mouth to let out a long, mournful cry, when the door across the room bursts open. A dreary summer night's air drifts in, and the scent of heat slows your mind. Your mother and father stand in the doorway, beaming in the kitchen light, and you run to them, forgetting about your fall. Your father drops down to meet you, picking you up, and suddenly you see the bundle of something in your mother's arms. It is an ugly something; it's face is squished together with baby fat, it's skin soft and weak. You are suddenly overcome by both love and jealousy, and with no way to voice these new emotions, you cry big droplets of tears. Not a noise escapes from your lips.

"Oh, Rosie," your mother says, her voice a rich lullaby to your ears, "we love you no less. This is your brother, Hugo, and you have to be a big girl and help take care of him."

You hate that your home you know and love has changed permanently. You place your hand over your brother's small face, feeling his warm breath, his tiny heartbeat. But you know you must love him, because he is new and you are curious, and that's all you need to fall in love.

And so you do, with no more tears over him, but with much screaming and yelling. You raise him like a brother, and love him and hate him all the same. He is your best friend in the world, and at times your enemy. When there is little else, it seems to you, to love, you escape with your other friends. Albus, for one, your same age, who does little besides listen and occasionally spark a wonderful conversation about magical bubbles and such. Having famous parents affects neither of you; you are still children, however, and growing up with the famous make everything different in a way, once you become aware of it.

Your escape is Lorcan Scamander, lifelong friend and soulmate, who you have enough love for at times you believe your heart may burst. When life at home becomes too much for you, he is your home, and you find an escape in his arms, listening to his steady heart, feeling his solid frame. The tickle of grass under your back when you watch the twinkle in each star seems ugly without him by your side. When daylight comes wonder is always drifting in the blonde hair on his head, in the twinkle of his blue eyes. With him, everything is magical, even when there isn't true magic for miles.

At Hogwart's, life begins to change for you. Proving yourself to everyone is beyond importance; a social life, if any, is small in comparison to everything you believe you must accomplish. When you are homesick, Lorcan is there, reminding you of everything familiar and warm and wonderful. Lorcan endures the stress you undergo, every moment of it for five years, by your side with help and a distant smile. Always distant; always wanting more than what you believe was there.

The enemy of a lifetime, longtime hated and horrible companion, Scorpius Malfoy, comes to you under a cherry tree in the early morning of spring. Dew collects on his eyelashes, his blonde hair glitters, his pale skin sparkles, his blue eyes ripple; everything about him seems magnified that morning, and you, silly girl, fall for it. You kiss him, and everything that once was hate melts away into love. Magic. It was magic.

And the very next day, curled up next to Lorcan on the Ravenclaw couch (you felt no guilt because you now belonged to Scorpius; Lorcan and you were friends, and that was all you ever saw in it) he kisses you. He kisses you and you love it, love it like you love chocolate, like you love fire, like you love home. And so begins the year where the lines between love and friendship, hate and worship, thin into nothingness. You love them both, too much at times, and not only do you manage to keep them from each other, you manage to keep the pain from yourself.

The line between the two of them blur. There comes a time when you can not even bring it in yourself to name them. You call them honey, baby, sweetheart, and pray to Merlin that they never find out about the other. Over time, the relationship you have with them stretches out, into so thin a sheet that you think it might break. You know you must make a decision. You do it because one's love shines out over the other; he is there, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and somehow his love is better.

You settle down in a neighborhood of school friends; Albus lives next door, your parents across the street, and he lives down the block. In the morning on your way to work, you see him sitting on his porch, holding a jar of blue bell flames between his hands, and you watch each day as his blonde hair turns white, and the fire in his eyes diminishes into a dull glow. And every day, you knew, every day when you get up again and again and take the same route past his house (though there were many), you know that in a way you are betraying _him, _your husband, but in another way you are giving life to the man you once loved long ago. That dull glow in his eyes sparks to life every morning until his death, and at his deathbed you cry until no one was left to cry with.

The depression came afterwards; a deep, deep hole that you feel you could have prevented in some way. You know that death is a part of life, but you cannot accept that he had died without you. Your husband comes and sits with you every day, feeds you sometimes by force, and kisses you sometimes with a deepness that ripples the edges of the glass separating you from the world. You hope to someday forget both of them; love was a dangerous thing in excess. But you cannot forget your life.

When death comes for you, in the cool spring morning of March, there is dew on the grass and you are remembering the ripple in his eyes, the twinkle in his eyes, when they kissed you. The two figures, so close but yet so far away, blur together. And somehow your loss of him is less painful; your love of him less guilt-ridden. The sunshine washes away all memory, and your love is without boundaries.

XX

**Can you figure out who Rose stayed with until the end? It doesn't say it in the story, but there are clues. I award ten points to you if you figure it out! Anyways, this is a short little piece for the TriWizard Tournament Challenge, basically changes in life. JacksonFrost graciously beta-read the story, so thanks be to you! **

**If you love Rose/Scorpius (and Lorcan) then check out my new and upcoming (100,000 word) story. It should be up and running soon! The summary is on my profile.**


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